Sugar Cookies

I really do believe that three might be the most magical age for Christmas.  Little P is over the moon excited about Christmas, and Santa coming, but still isn't quite old enough to be greedy.  Her list is only 3 items long, and to be honest, she'll be happy just having something under the tree. 

We needed to have something to leave out for Santa, so we decided to make some beautiful sugar cookies.  I searched for the perfect recipe, and in the end, we decided to go with this recipe from Katrina's Kitchen, which promised THE BEST sugar cookies. We weren't disappointed.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 3 cups all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until smooth.  Beat in vanilla and almond extract, and eggs.

In a separate bowl combine baking powder with four and add a little at a time to the wet ingredients.  The dough will be very stiff.  If it becomes too stiff for your mixer, turn out the dough onto a countertop surface and knead the dough by hand.

Do not chill the dough.

Divide into workable catches, roll out onto a floured surface and cut.  You want these cookies to be approximately 1/4 inch thick.

Bake at 350 for 6-8 minutes.  Let them cool on the cookies sheet until they are firm enough to transfer to a cooling rack.

Decorate.

Little P did leave out a plate of her cookies for Santa, as well as a reindeer for Rudolf. He must have loved them because the only think he left on the plate was a few crumbs.